Several disquieting wireless messages were received by the British warships on the east coast of South America, giving garbled and unreliable accounts of the Coronel action. It was not till November 5th that a statement which appeared to be fairly authoritative, in spite of its German origin, was received from Valparaiso. It said that the _Monmouth_ was sunk and that the _Good Hope_ had probably shared her fate; no mention was made of the _Canopus_, _Glasgow_, or _Otranto_. The command in these waters now devolved upon Rear-Admiral Stoddart (flying his flag in the _Carnarvon_), who was still busily engaged in the search for the _Karlsruhe_. His ships had been operating over a wide area extending from the neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro to the northward of St. Paul's Rocks and the Rocas, and thence to the westward along the north coast of South America. This otherwise fruitless search achieved one notable result in compelling the _Karlsruhe_ to abandon her system of obtaining supplies through German storeships coming from Pernambuco, as that port was kept under rigid observation. She was thus forced to leave the trade route between Great Britain and South America for longer periods in order to meet her consort, the armed liner _Kronprinz Wilhelm_, who now became a link between her and her sources of supply in Central America. There was, in consequence, a marked falling off at this period in the number of her captures. Assuming that the worst had happened, and that the German squadron was now on its way round to the east coast, it became imperative to unite our remaining ships into one squadron as quickly as possible. It was obvious that with the Australian and Japanese ships behind them, the Germans could not afford to linger where they were; moreover, they had learned at Valparaiso that we had no naval force of any preponderance with which to oppose them. Flushed with their recent victory, it seemed probable that if they were not much damaged they would most likely hasten their movements in the hope of meeting our ships before we had had time to unite or to gather reinforcements. The German squadron would not be able to separate with any safety once we had succeeded in joining together our scattered forces, so that the damage they might do to our commerce would be thereby reduced to a minimum. For these reasons it will be seen that the River Plate was admirably situated for the rendezvous of our ships that had escaped from Coronel to the Falklands, and of the northern squadron. Again, it was possible to coal there without infringing territorial rights, as there is an excellent anchorage well outside the three mile limit from the foreshore. The following calculations, written on November 6th, 1914, were made by the author: "The German Admiral will expect us to get reinforcements out from England, so that it seems probable that he will lose no time in coming round to the east coast.